There are activist advocates for the Commons, and against Commercialization, Commodification, “Globalization”, Neo-Liberalism, or Privatization, as well as scholars of “common-pool resources” like Elinor Ostrom and her colleagues participating in the International Association for the Study of the Commons.
For example, James McCarthy says:
The first argument of this article is that the widespread, mainly non-academic discourses and policy proposals regarding commons discussed here have only the loosest connections to scholarly conceptions of common pool resources and common property regimes, understanding that have been refined and advocated in a large and robust line of research over the past few decade. …
The invocations of new ‘commons’ examined here exceed the boundaries of such strict scholarly treatments of common pool resources and common property regimes. …
[N]ew proponents of commons include activists, policy entrepreneurs, and others. …
Why does the looseness of the connections between the proposed commons examined here and the common property literature matter, though? For two reasons. First, crafting workable, viable commons is tremendously difficult, as evidenced in the academic literature, which contains the cumulative results of decades of efforts to analyze, distill, and apply lessons about what conditions, rules, resources and so forth seem to characterize successful commons. Second, the fact that current calls for commons are coming from many sources other than academics steeped in this literature indicates the broad appeal of ‘the commons’ after decades of neoliberalism.
(McCarthy 2005: 10)
C. A. Bowers defines the commons in the following way:
There is another way to think about the direction that educational reform should take—one that strengthens the ability of the world’s diverse cultures to resist the environmentally destructive and cultural homogenizing forces that are now being globalized. This alternative approach to educational reform involves learning about (indeed, revitalizing) the traditions of the commons of these cultures that go back to the origins of humankind. Basically, the commons included what was available to all members of the culture: the water, air, woodlands, pastures, plants, animals, as well as other natural systems.
The commons also included the symbolic aspects of the culture: narratives, knowledge of the cycles of natural systems, spoken and written symbol systems, craft knowledge, music, dances, moral norms and patterns of reciprocity, knowledge of the medicinal characteristics of plants, and so forth. The commons were and still are varied depending on the characteristics of the bioregion. And the cultures that developed over hundreds, even thousands of years of place-based and tested experience also led to different traditions that became a taken-for-granted part of the commons. The key issue here is not to interpret this brief overview of the commons as representing all the symbolic aspects of the commons as free of injustice and environmental abuse.
(Bowers 2004: 49)
See also “What’s the Commons” for the definition by Donald M. Nonini (2006a).
Moreover, Josée Johnston compares the commons discourse with that of sustainable development:
(Johnston 2003: 39)
Argument by current authors especially in 2000s seems to be similar to that of Ivan Illich, who referred to the commons mainly in 1980s. Unfortunately, however, the formers do not refer to the latter, while the Ecologist (1993; 1994) cites I. Illich (1982; 1983).
Furthermore, see the following list, REFERENCES.
Relevant (short) notes:
REFERENCES
- Bakker, Karen. 2007 “The “Commons” Versus the “Commodity”: Alter-globalizaion, Anti-privaization and the Human Rights to Water in the Global South,” Antipode 39(3), pp. 430-455.
- Bowers, C. A. 2004 “Revitalizing the Commons or an Individualized Approach to Planetary Citizenship: The Choice Before Us,” Educational Studies 36(1), pp. 45-58.
- Bowers, C. A. 2006a “Silences and Double Binds: Why the Theories of John Dewey and Paulo Freire Cannot Contribute to Revitalizing the Commons,” Capitalism, Nature, Socialism 17(3), pp. 71-87.
- Bowers, C. A. 2006b Revitalizing the Commons: Cultural and Educational Sites of Resistance and Affirmation, Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books.
- Bowers, Chet. 2009 “Educating for a Revitalization of the Cultural Commons,” Canadian Journal of Environmental Education 14, pp. 196-200.
- Boyer, Jefferson. 2006 “Reinventing the Appalachian Commons,” Social Analysis 50(3), pp. 217-232.
- The Ecologist. 1994 “Whose Common Future: Reclaiming the Commons,” Environment & Urbanization 6(1), pp. 106-130.
- The Ecologist. 1993 Whose Common Future? Reclaiming the Commons, London: Earthscan.
- Illich, Ivan. 1981 Shadow Work, Boston: Marion Boyars.
- Illich, Ivan. 1982 Gender, New York: Pantheon.
- Illich, Ivan. 1983. “Silence is a Commons,” CoEvolution Quarterly, Winter 1983, pp. 5-9.
- Johnston, Josée. 2003 “Who Cares about the Commons?,” Capitalism, Nature, Socialism 14(4), pp. 1-41.
- Klein, Naomi. 2001 “Reclaiming the Commons,” New Left Review 9, pp. 81-89.
- Lu, Flora. 2006 “ ‘The Commons’ in an Amazonian Context,” Social Analysis 50(3), pp. 187-194.
- McCarthy, James. 2005 “Commons as Counterhegemonic Projects,” Capitalism, Nature, Socialism 16(1), pp. 9-24.
- Nonini, Donald M. 2006a “Introduction: the Global Idea of ‘the Commons’,” Social Analysis 50(3), pp. 164-177.
- Nonini, Donald M. 2006b “Reflections on Intellectual Commons,” Social Analysis 50(3), pp. 203-216.
- Nonini, Donald M. (ed.) 2007 The Global Idea of ‘the Commons’, New York: Berghahm Books.
- Pickles, John. 2006 “Collectivism, Universalism, and Struggles over Commons Property Resources in the ‘New’ Europe,” Social Analysis 50(3), pp. 178-186.
- Prakash, Madhu Suri, and Dana Stuchul. 2004 “McEducation Marginalized: Multiverse of Learning-Living in Grassroots Commons,” Educational Studies 36(1), pp. 58-73.
- Rowe, Jonathan. 2002 “Promise of the Commons,” Earth Island Journal 17(3), pp. 28-30.
- Scharper, Stephen B., and Hilary Cunningham. 2006 “The Genetic Commons: Resisting the Neo-liberal Enclosure of Life,” Social Analysis 50(3), pp. 195-202.
- Smith-Nonini, Sandy. 2006 “Conceiving the Health Commons: Operationalizing a ‘Right’ to Health,” Social Analysis 50(3), pp. 233-245.
- Sumner, Jennifer. 2005 Sustainability and the Civil Commons: Rural Communities in the Age of Globalization, Toronto: University of Toronto Press.